When using the Tetra Whisper Air Pump on your fish tank, you may find that the air flow it is producing to be too strong. The fast water and have a negative impact on your fish, plants and other aquatic pets.
To see how you can reduce the pump strength, you can take a look at this article from Aquarium Blueprints.
1. The easiest way to reduce the airflow of your Tetra Whisper Air Pump is to use an air control valve. This part comes with a knob that you can turn clockwise to reduce the airflow being produced by the pump.
Our Tetra Whisper Air Pump, which has been rated for up to 100 gallons, comes with several air control valves included inside the box. So, you may want to check the packaging of your pump to see if you have one available.
We recommend that you keep the air control valve out of the water in your fish tank. Otherwise, this part can get clogged-up easily, which makes it very hard to clean. Therefore, we recommend that you keep it dry.
When it comes to installing the air control valve, you need to do it in between two airline tubings. For our setup, we did the following:
- Cut a small piece of the airline tubing.
- Plug the small tubing into the air outlet of the Tetra Whisper Air Pump.
- Plug the air control valve into the opposite end of the small airline tubing.
- Use another airline tubing to plug into the other end of the air control valve.
- On the opposite end of the other airline tubing, you can then plug in your air stone or sponge filter.
If you don’t have an air control valve available, then you can reduce the strong air flow of the Tetra Whisper Air Pump by squeezing the airline tubing. The easiest way to do so is to tie a tight not on the tubing.
Another way to reduce the airflow of the air pump is to simply wait until your air stone or sponge filter get clogged-up by the organic wastes in your fish tank. By doing so, the clogged-up openings will eventually block the airflow from being dispersed into the water volume of your aquarium.
With that said, this method could end up damaging your Tetra Whisper Air Pump, air stone and/or sponge filter. Therefore, we recommend trying either of the first two methods that we mentioned earlier in this guide instead.